Sailing around the World ( presently at Sea )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Sat 2 Oct 2010 07:55
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FRIDAY 1 st OCTOBER
2010 ( Day 5 at Sea )
We had another difficult night at sea,
blooming mountainous sea's and a wind that would peel the hairs off a Monkeys
tail.
We seem to be making good progress, but it does not
show on our daily log. even down to other yachts reporting bigger
daily milage's than our selves and yet, when we
check all the daily Lattitude and longitude positions, we actually made ground
on every
boat in the fleet, from a mere 3 miles to over 60
miles, something is not adding up and we havent figured it out
yet.
09.00hrs Radio Net :- A Lady's
turn today to , so skipper was the radio controller ( on the SSB ) for
collecting all the positions of all the boats and logging them, plus checking that all boats are safe and sound. This usually
takes about an hour in total..
At this stage, the clouds began to clear for a
while, the first bit of blue we have seen for days, and it got nice and warm to
boot.
Then some wise guy decided to announce to the fleet
that " Radio Mauritius " said that our area was going to have SE gales to strong
gales for the
next 3 days, Just what the sheppards
dog ordered after he was kicked by the Sheppard,
The sea's were massive, and reminded Skipper of his
cousin " Dave H. " who used to skipper huge big fishing trawlers in this
area
a few years ago, Dave tell's the storey
:-
" One day at sea in very bad weather, and
having been awake for 30 hours on end, he began to nod off at the steering whell
( as one would do )
when suddenly , he was brought back to
reality when his coffee slid down the ledge onto his shirt, Ohhhhh myyyy Gawd,
whats happening here !
Very quickly he realised that their
ship was sliding bach down a wave that resembled a massive wall of water,
heading straight
to ' Davy Jones Locker' It was
either drive or drown ! so he slammed the huge engines into full fwd and very
slowly, as the engines roared above the
the sound of the breaking
seas, the ship slowly edged her way up to the
top of the wave and down the other
side, pheeeeew , that was a close call, and as a
result he lived to tell the tale
"
I love those hair raising stories, especially when
they were passed onto skipper by Terry, so we make sure it reads well for all
the land lovers,
Well we feel a bit like Dave H. right now, all on
our own out here ( well not quite ) in the middle of this huge Indian
Ocean, but it is Skippers responsibility to maks sure that the
boat stays afloat and we arrive at our
destination safely...
18.00hrs, It is still extreemly rough, and it
dinner time, so skipper cooked a steak curry, now this actually took 2 hours in
difficult conditions
and it all turned our lovely,, An Indian
Curry, with rice, and not one grai got spilt or left behind,
As Neil and Terry dont do cooking, they have to do
the dishes, bless them,
Distance
travelled...................................744 n miles
Distance to Dest.
........................... 1,569 n miles.
Weather,
.....................................Crap
Sea's
.......................................Massive
Wind
...............................................35 / 42 knots (
gusting to 50 nkots )
Ohhh we actually managed a brief
14.1knots slidind down the front of a magnificant wave, wow
!
Night watches,
:- 22.00hrs /
00.00hrs............................... Terry
00.00hrs /
02.00hrs................................Aileen
02.00hrs /
04.00hrs................................Skipper
04.00hrs / 06.00hrs................................Neil
06.00hrs /
08.00hrs................................Terry
Thats all for today,
Signed :- Stephen
Hyde ( skipper )
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